358 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



live, and to live they must eat and drink, and have somewhat to 

 wear, and it must be grown on somebody's farm. I never sell a 

 pound of hay nor a bushel of grain of any kind, but if others want 

 to sell, let them sell ; or if they prefer to put their produce into 

 sheep and pork and beef, or into blood animals, let them do that. 

 If any farmer has not dressing enough, let him buy Cumberland 

 Superphosphate, or some other if he can find as good, or let him 

 make some himself, out of old bones, if he likes that way. I 

 consider the manufacture of fertilizers as necessary and useful a 

 business as any other. Those engaged in it succeed in producing 

 what enriches our barren fields out of what would otherwise be 

 wasted, or put to no use. They are ransacking the ends of the 

 earth to get materials, and they are not all found yet. We have 

 rocks in our hills with riches in them, and a good many fish in the 

 sea, and a good deal of muck in our swamps not taken out yet. I 

 am not going to worry about future generations starving. Let us 

 furnish the cities with food, reclaim our old fields, catch fish, sow 

 clover, haul muck into our barn-yards, and not fear but that we are 

 making real progress. It .will require brain work, and hard work, 

 after all, but it can be done, and the work won't hurt us. 



Secretary Goodale, Let me heartily endorse the views of my 

 friend Perley. He has struck the right vein. 



With regard to a supply of food for coming generations, my 

 mind is perfectly at ease. Through what agencies it will come, 

 does not yet appear. It may be by feats of engineering, which 

 shall carry back to exhausted lands what has been carried off from 

 them. But this is highly improbable to my mind. 



I am a firm believer in the Divine Providence. When wants 

 arise, if we behave as we ought, they will be supplied. They have 

 often been when we behaved otherwise. When the Creator made 

 this eartli, He stocked it with food material enough to last for its 

 inhabitants as long it lasts ; although a good deal of it was invested 

 in a way that business men might call unproductive capital, or, at 

 least, very tardy in paying dividends. When some of that which 

 is nearest at hand, gets washed through the cities and rivers into 

 the ocean, it is not lost, but only deposited where future genera- 

 tions will find and use it ; just as we occupy soils ground up from 

 rocks by the action of glaciers, and washed hither by ocean cur- 

 rents a long time before our day. Meanwhile, we are constantly 

 discovering sources of fertilization hitherto concealed, or unknown. 

 It is but very lately since they began to dig and use the mineral 



